Feature Article

The Key to Your Agency’s Sales Success: Partnering (Part 2 of 2)
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Last week we talked about how to use partnering in order to become your referral source’s provider of choice. We went over HOW to partner with your sources, including needs assessment and implementation. This week, we are going to get into more specifics, including what specific types of questions and how to ask them in order to become your referral source’s logical solution to their needs.

So, there are two basic types of questions, open-ended and closed-ended.  Open-ended questions typically start with who, what, when, where, how and why.  You will typically use open questions to explore particular situations and to identify needs.  They are especially advantageous, because they are open to a large range of responses, providing us an insight into what’s on their mind.  Open probes can also be used to clarify your understanding of what your customer has said.  Closed ones start with words like do, are, is, which or have.  They limit the possible responses to a simple one word answer like yes, or no, a number, or to a few options.  Although closed probes limit possible responses, they have several uses and can be extremely useful in the hands of a sales person. Use them to keep the person on track, to steer the conversation back to the business at hand.

In needs based sales, the most dangerous thing to do is to make assumptions or jump to unfounded conclusions.  This is why confirming the need in this process is so important.  If you do not know that the information you are basing your strategy upon is accurate, then it is only a matter of time before the proposition blows up in your face.  Also, remember that perception is reality to the referral source.  In the process of confirming the information, the referral source is made to feel important.  They feel like the sales person is listening and actively engaged in finding a customized solution.  If you don’t ask, then you will never know for sure.

The referral source may not tell you what you need to know on the first round of questions.  Determine before you go in to see them what your goal is and the questions that you will use.  Preparation and practice are key ingredients to success in this area.  Try different angles until you hit upon the one that gets that next piece of information.  Confirm it and go on to the next.  Over the course of your visits, you are building a relationship and their trust.  You may be able to come back with a question you asked early on but did not receive an answer to once you have their trust.

Another key element is to recognize that there are potentially a number of people within a referral source that all have different (and sometimes divergent) needs.  This multiplies the need for practiced questioning.  The series of open and closed-ended questions must be designed to unearth all of their true interests.  They may say that they select a home care provider by evaluating outcomes and quality of care, but that may have nothing to do with their actual reason.  Until the sales person can learn what motivates the agency selection, they cannot perform a needs analysis that will allow them to form a long-term partnership.  Relationships are only as strong as their basis, therefore the strongest home care referral relationships are based on needs fulfillment.
The process takes time to develop into strong referral relationships.  The pace should not be rushed.  The sales person cannot afford to be impatient as they will not build the proper rapport.  They may get sloppy and miss important information.  Since the goal is to build long-term relationships, it is necessary to have a long-term perspective. 

Monitoring, managing and protecting the relationships are accomplished by constantly keeping your antennae up to pick up on any changes or new needs.  Just because you have ascertained their needs at one point in time does not mean that they will not change with time.
The depth of the relationship is directly related to the sales person’s ability to continually probe for needs and confirm that the agency is delivering.  Add Legendary Customer Service to the mix and you strengthen it further. 

Finally, if the sales person knows the details about the referral source including personal information such as hobbies, medical school, birthday, etc., then they are positioned to have a strong and long relationship.  The relationship should be cultivated at every touch point; ultimately it is only as strong as the weakest link.

Partnering is the number one and most unassailable competitive advantage.  Encourage your sales team to be good detectives that build their relationships on the basis of meeting the needs of the referral sources.  Good Luck and Happy Marketing!

The Key to Your Agency’s Sales Success: Partnering (Part 1 of 2)
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The most successful home care and hospice agencies are those that are able to form a partnership with their referral sources. This is true universally across the country in agencies large and small.  So what does that mean, partnering?

Partnerships are formed with referral sources by the agency’s sales team by isolating the specific needs each referral source has, and then creating a service program that will consistently meet those specific needs. When a partnership relationship is attained, then the referral source just naturally sends their home care and hospice referrals to the agency. Sounds easy, right? Well, let’s dig a little deeper.

Partnering is by far the most effective method of building and maintaining a successful home care or hospice program. For the physician, a partnership may involve a specialized set of protocols and processes that are designed to deliver exactly what they want. In a facility, such as a skilled nursing facility, the partnership may be based on how the facility likes referrals to be handled—for instance, the sales person receiving the name of the patient and then proceeding to meet with the patient and their family, obtaining all of the rest of the relevant referral information. Usually, however you can make dealing with Home Care or Hospice as easy as possible is a good place to start. Why? Well:

If there is one universal tenet, it is that if the home care or hospice agency can make the referral source’s life easier, then they will receive their referrals.

To best accomplish this level of partnership, training for the sales team should be based on needs assessment, or how to ask about needs. The sales people need to learn to ask questions designed to discover what is most important to each particular referral source. While ultimately the goal is to find out what it will take to become their preferred home care or hospice provider, in the short term they want to know which needs the agency can fulfill. Once they know the answer to that question, it is then simply a matter of positioning the agency as the logical choice to deliver on those needs.  Since most agencies do not train their sales people in the art of needs assessment, the competitive advantage can be huge.

Needs assessment is not an easy art to master. It is much like being a great detective—it sounds easier than it is. Good detectives ask questions that they have already planned ahead of time, like with a chess match. They try to think a couple moves ahead of the conversation when choosing their questions. They mix closed and open ended questions to get that precious information about their referral source’s needs. What the questions are and how the questioning occurs can position the sales person as both genuinely interested and eventually—the one with the solution. By repeating back the information to test for understanding and agreement, they can build a road that takes them where they want to go.

So, now that you’ve got the basics down about HOW to partner—next issue we’ll go over what specific types of questions and how to ask them in order to become your referral source’s logical solution to their needs (and in the process becoming their preferred Home Care or Hospice provider!). Have a great couple of weeks, and happy selling!

Previous Articles

The 7 Keys of Highly Effective Home Care Marketing: Part 2 of 2
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In the last issue of The Legendary Sales Leadership Letter, we went over the first 3 keys to building an effective Home Care Marketing plan.  The marketing plan developed by each home care organization will determine, in large part, its success over the next five years.  We may not know the future of Medicare rules, regulations or payment rates, but we do know that competition for those patients will continue to be intense.

The last 4 keys to Home Care Marketing and Sales success are:

Packaging and Specialization

Everyday there are more agencies that are creating specialty to programs to meet the specific needs of their customers.  The sales team should be probing for these needs and communicating them back to the agency.  The agency can then develop a specialty program in partnership with major referral sources to create the perfect home care solution for their patients.  This level of integration allows for the referral relationship to become almost unassailable by the competition.  In fact, when the home care agency adopts the physician group’s protocols, the care becomes almost seamless.  This improves patient outcomes and satisfaction with care and makes your referral source happy.  This represents a win-win-win situation.

The key considerations when developing a specialty program are:

- Is there a sufficient market for these services in your community?
- Have you established the goals for the specialty program?
- Is the return on investment sufficient enough to support the cost of development and implementation?
- Are there physicians that are interested in assisting in the development of the program?
- Will the physicians write the orders specifically for your agency and the program?
- Does the agency have the staff with specialized training in the field being considered?

The market analysis showing that there is a sufficient demand in your service area for the care delivered under this specialty program is the critical first step.  If the answer is no, then the actual return on investment will not be adequate.  Set goals for the new program for increased referrals, implementation timetable, patient satisfaction, outcomes and all other key elements that you can measure.  When calculating the return delivered by the specialty program, you must first deduct the referrals that you are already receiving and look at the incremental increases in referrals.  Of course, the improved clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction and strengthened relationships have value and should be considered in the calculations.

Packaging around existing core competencies allows the agency to develop a specialty program quicker and with less expense.  Further, the agency has a current flow of referrals with care plans that are consistent with the plans that will be developed for the specialty program.  Approach some of the current referral sources as potential partners in the development of the program.  Whether you are partnering with existing referral sources or new ones, the involvement of one or more specialists is very important to the ultimate success of the program.

Successful specialty programs include:

- Orthopedic
- Neuro Rehab
- Cardiac
- Pre-hospice
- Alzheimer’s
- Pulmonary
- Pediatric

The home care industry is rapidly adopting this concept and developing specialty programs.  The packaging is important to establish a “brand” for the program in the community.  If you are first to market you will have to blaze the trail and create the interest for this type of program.

Training is important for both the sales force and the clinical team.  The sales team needs to understand the clinical aspects well enough to discuss the program in the community.  The clinical team needs to understand how the sales process is designed so that they may integrate with it to promote the program when appropriate. 

Many times the initial and ongoing success of the program will hinge on whether or not the physicians are willing to act as advocates for the program and the agency.  When developing the program qualify the physicians for commitments to refer to the program.  Then enlist them in the promotion to others in the community.  This is a great place to collect and use testimonials.

The naming of the program is another important aspect of its marketing.  It should be reflective of the services and area of specialization.  Making it easy to remember and understand is always a good idea.  If it is the first program of its type in your service area, then you have the opportunity to create the brand associated with this type of specialty program in the community.  In addition to the name there needs to be a USP (unique selling proposition) for the program.  It should explain why someone should use the program.

Focused Message

There is a good reason that successful politicians are constantly staying on message.  They know that if they have a focused message and they deliver it consistently they have the highest chance of being elected.  Clearly the message must resonate with the voting citizens.  The same principles hold true in creating your advertising, sales and marketing message.  Know the target market and focus the message on the benefits to this segment of the market.  If you are tracking why each referral source selects the agency, focusing the message becomes much easier.

Each member of the sales team must understand the agency’s message and be prepared to deliver it consistently to each of the referral sources they manage.  The message must be adapted to resonate with each of the referral sources to reflect their key interests.  By keeping the salespeople focused on the central message the effectiveness of the team will be greatly increased.  Keep focused on the message and its benefits to the intended audience.

Highly trained sales team

In other industries the ongoing sales training for the sales team is standard.  In home care it is still the minority of agencies that have professional sales training programs.  Those agencies that have invested in the ongoing training are well rewarded.  The training programs may involve outside experts and or internal resources.  All sales people benefit from sales training; they either learn new concepts and strategies or have familiar ones reinforced.

The sales training should be consistent for all of the sales representatives as they are added to the team or replace an existing team member.  If your new hires come with prior home care sales experience, make them take the same training and learn the way that your agency does things.  The consistency of the image and message delivered by the sales team is very important.  Many times new sales people will be bringing sales practices, home care knowledge or beliefs that are not consistent with the new agency.  This must be guarded against to prevent the potential damage to the carefully built reputation of the agency in the community.

The best training program for home care sales team is to have monthly or quarterly one- or two-day training programs for all sales team members (including inside and outside salespeople).  Ideally the entire sales team is assembled to ensure that all members hear and learn the same strategies and approaches.  This will also serve to build the team and its cohesiveness.  Additionally, the salespeople should read about sales and listen to CDs about sales in the car. 

The agency will always have a large investment in the sales team and its members—professional sales training only makes sense. 

Technology

The adoption of CRM (customer relationship management) practices is becoming more common place in home care.  Other industries have invested heavily in CRM solutions to create a stronger relationship with their customer.  There are numerous benefits including:

- Track effectiveness and results of sales and marketing initiatives
- Understand where the referrals are coming from and why
- Know what your sales team is doing and the results they are producing
- Manage all referral source information in a central database
- Rate accounts and prioritize sales activities
- Never lose important information if a sales person leaves the organization
- Know the customer and how to best service them to build a long-term strong relationship

The technology that the agency is using to manage their patient care such as point of care devices, telehealth, pathways, diagnostic tests, etc. can also be used to create a point of differentiation.  This allows the referral source to have one more reason to specify an agency.  The benefit to the referral sources and to the patients or clients must be communicated for maximum benefit to be derived.

The sales team should have the ability to make PowerPoint presentations to larger groups with an LCD projector or to small groups on a laptop.  This presentation should be consistent with the agency’s marketing image and its other collateral materials.  It should be very professional.  The message must be crafted for each type of audience to make each presentation most effective.

Conclusion

Home care as an industry is rapidly being forced to adopt aggressive sales and marketing strategies and tactics.  Competition is fierce and the ability to differentiate the agency in the eyes of the community, in particular the referral sources, will determine the long-term viability of the home care program.  The relationships built over many years can be lost if the agency is unable to compete on the sales and marketing front as well as with service delivery.

Invest wisely in the sales and marketing program and the results will follow.  Engage professional advisors to plan, implement, refine and measure the success of the sales effort.  Create a sales culture in the organization that is inclusive of all staff.

The 7 Keys of Highly Effective Home Care Marketing: Part 1 of 2
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The new year is upon us, and one thing is certain: competition is getting fierce in home care.  Existing agencies are expanding and new ones are opening.  Even in the certificate of need states, the level of competition is heating up. So what do you need to do to make 2010 the start of your next big successes? 

The marketing plan developed by each home care organization will determine, in large part, its success over the next five years.  We may not know the future of Medicare rules, regulations or payment rates, but we do know that competition for those patients will continue to be intense.

Development of a superior marketing plan will pay great dividends no matter the size, scope or type of agency.  Should plans include diversification into other sectors of the home care field, then the plan to market and sell those services should be carefully crafted to enable successful diversification.

The following seven keys will ensure your future marketing success:

Competitive Market Research

Know the competition and the market!  Knowing how the competition compares is extremely important to the success of the program.  The demographic of the market(s) that are served and the projections for the next ten years will determine the viability of your agency’s programs and services.

To conduct competitive analysis, the agency needs to establish an ongoing “secret shopper” program that will shop the competition alongside your agency.  The key attributes to be surveyed need be established in order to track the comparison with the competition.  The sales team must be armed with the knowledge of what each competitor does well, and what they do not.  Only then will they be able to craft a specific targeted and effective sales message that will deliver maximum results with their referral partners.  This is essential, and you can do this internally or hire an outside firm to conduct the research. 

For the market analysis you will want to consult with the available demographic and industry specific data.  There are many sources of information, with little definitive or extensive information.  There are studies underway to determine the best sales and marketing practices of the leaders in the home care industry, and some of the measures being studied include amount and composition of marketing budgets, how the budgets are developed, sales practices, training, CRM (customer relationship management) solution usage, ROI (return on investment) and others.  Over the next few years there will be better data developed against which to benchmark your agency’s practices.

Finally, it is advisable to subscribe to benchmarking services to contrast your agency’s sales and marketing practices with comparable agencies in the industry.  By knowing how the agency compares to its peers the senior and sales management may better direct the sales and marketing programs.

Customer Service

Home care is a service industry, and will always be one.  Therefore the ability to continually perfect the service delivered will be an important part of the overall sales and marketing success.  Without great customer service the effect of the sales and marketing effort will be just spinning wheels.  The focus must be to do everything possible to make the referral source’s job easier and to enable the best service for their referrals.

One thing to make sure that all agency staff understands is this: there will always be problems in home care.  It is an industry with a lot of moving parts and they are all human.  This means that the staff must welcome each new problem and rejoice for the opportunity to provide service that exceeds expectations.  The old saying about every complaint representing a golden sales opportunity is nowhere more applicable than in home care!

The home care sales team must seize every opportunity to build relationships by exhibiting strong customer service.  They should be viewed by the referral source as a trusted service representative that will handle anything that they need pertaining to home care.  The salesperson must be visible and accountable at all times and under any circumstances.  The strongest relationships are between companies and customers where there has been a problem and it was resolved to the customer’s complete and total satisfaction.

Strong Relationships

The goal of every sales and marketing effort should be to build strong relationships.  Home care marketing is all about relationships.  The stronger the relationships the greater the reliance by the customer on the agency to provide the entire range of home care services required.  There are many ways to build and maintain strong relationships.  Every sales representative should be constantly looking for ways to better know their customers.  This will lead to the opportunity to cement referral relationships. 

The key to forging these strong relationships is to know everything that you can about the customer and then have than information available to the entire sales team.  This would include the inside sales people also known in many organizations as intake.  If the inside sales people know what the outside sales rep knows, then it is possible to truly offer seamless and complete CRM.  The deeper the knowledge of the customer, their personal aspects and service requirements, the better able the agency is to provide this level of super service.  The more people in the organization that have access to this information the greater the impact of this personalized communication and service.

The relationships that the agency maintains in the community with its referral sources and other customers are the most valuable asset.  In home care this asset must be constantly cultivated, nurtured, managed and protected.  Cultivated to build new relationships and foster deeper relationships within existing referral source organizations.  Nurtured to constantly develop the relationship and the level of trust the referral source has with the home care agency.  They must be managed to ensure the best results and consistent service.  Relationships must be protected at all times to keep the asset safe from competition.

These first 3 keys will be the building blocks for the last 4 keys, to be shared in the next issue of The Legendary Sales Leadership Letter. Until then, Happy Selling!

Have You Found Your Tipping Point?
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In Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling business book, The Tipping Point, he makes the case that change happens dramatically and ideas spread like an epidemic.  His idea is simple: for every product or service there is a tipping point at which time the message takes hold and the results are powerful.  While it is applied in the book towards other industries, we can use the same concepts in Home Care and Hospice.

In Home Care and Hospice, there is a tipping point that defines the change from being a reacting service provider to a proactive sales organization.  It is a very important chance, one that is becoming increasingly necessary for many factors: from increased competition, the economy, mounting financial losses—and everything in between.

Gladwell cites three characteristics of change at the tipping point: first, contagiousness; second, that little causes have big effects; and third, change happens not gradually in one dramatic moment.  To even begin to make good use of these concepts in your Home Care or Hospice agency’s sales and marketing, you have to first recognize that the train is leaving the station, and you need to make sure your agency is on it!

Where is your tipping point?  What will be your wake up call?  Once your competitors have taken over five of your best referral sources? 10? All of them? Have you already missed your tipping point, and will you soon be playing catch up?

Once you decide to take the necessary steps to change your marketing and sales strategy for the new decade’s upcoming challenges, change will happen in a hurry.  There is a flywheel effect to the process, and it takes a long time to get the wheel to even move enough to make the first rotation—but thankfully it will get easier and quicker from that point forward.  That is, of course, as long as we continue to exert the energy required to keep it moving.

I have found that there are still many Home Care and Hospice agencies that have not yet felt compelled to focus on developing a comprehensive sales and marketing strategy.  They are, thankfully, fewer by the month.  More agencies are planning their growth strategically and with a sales mentality—and the more advanced they become in this process, the more effective they will be and the more momentum will start to build.

In case you haven’t noticed, there is more competition every day and they aren’t getting any less aggressive.  This is a time of expanded competition for many organizations, and they are not necessarily moving into underserved areas.  Your key accounts (the biggest referrers) are by definition your competition’s targets, so you have GOT to stay ahead of them by keeping close to those key accounts.  Be visible and listen at all times for what their needs are—those needs will continually change, and thus so will your calls to them.  Stay on top of your numbers to spot trends and changes quickly.  Too many agencies have gotten caught on the wrong side of the tipping point, and found themselves having to compete fiercely for business they assumed was always going to be theirs. Do not make that mistake, and make sure that if you realize you missed the tipping point, it’s never too late to make the changes you need to make. 

As an industry we have always provided a quality service.  The change is that now “quality” is both quantifiable (with benchmarked data and Home Health Compare data agencies are able to “prove” that they provide better quality), but also assumed. This is both great news to the agencies with high quality numbers, and good news to the ones who don’t.  So if you have fantastic numbers, flaunt them in your collateral materials—and if you don’t, no need to despair—you’ll have the time and opportunity to get those numbers up.  Know what you have available to prove your quality, and start that conversation with your referral sources.  You can bet that your competition will!

Now that marketing and sales are no longer new elements for hospice (and even less novel for home care), there are more board of directors and CEOs initiating the dialogue about what the agency should do to sell itself in the community.  Be prepared for this if you are showing any of the signs that might lead to a knee-jerk reaction to start a new sales and marketing program immediately.  One thing about hospice (and home care) is that the sales cycle takes three to six months to really see results from any new initiatives.  Be proactive and you will head off those unpleasant discussions with your boss.

Remember to keep building on your success.  When looking for ways to revitalize (or initiate) your sales and marketing program, start with what you already have.  Look for those things that worked in the past but got put aside because your agency grew and there was gradually less focus on getting new referrals.  If it worked in the past, it should be considered.  Conversely don’t make strategic decisions just because “that’s the way we have always done it.” Every initiative has to make sense as a part of the overall program, and budget dollars are ever more precious these days.

If you have invested in telehealth or a specialty program, you have to make sure that one of your returns on investment is increased market share.  To know your market share, you must have a way to measure it, and that starts with tracking where your business is coming from and why.  Agencies are making big investments in technology to stay on top of their data collecting and analysis—so stay ahead of the competition.

What will it take to push you over the edge?  What will be your wake up call?

Will it be declining revenues, increased staff turnover, difficulty recruiting, lack of traction with specialty programs, or ...?  Maybe long-time good referral sources whose volume of referrals is declining?  These are all symptoms present in agencies that have not started the process of building a modern sales oriented organization.

You have worked hard to get where you are!  Look for tipping points and seize every opportunity.  Remember that “Sales” is not a bad word.  If it carries any negative connotations in your organization—it’s time to get over it!  Happy Selling!

One of The Most Powerful Home Care and Hospice Marketing Strategies
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Here in the Marketing and Sales department at Simione Consultants, we are constantly searching for ways to stretch our clients’ marketing dollars.  Over time, we found one strategy that has a very high Return on Investment (ROI): Word of Mouth.

There is no better testimony to the wonderful work our industry does, and no greater marketing tool than encouraging and empowering customers to spread the word about your agency.  The patients, clients, referrals sources and staff that believe in your agency and its delivery of home care or hospice services should be enlisted and assisted in being the “evangelists” for your brand.  I use the term evangelists because that is the level of buy-in and belief that customers can and will achieve if you will help them to do so.

In every industry, companies are looking for ways to make their marketing dollars go further.  Gone are the days where the answer to the question “how do we increase sales?” was to buy more advertisements.  In the past, there was an immediate and direct correlation between how much you spent on advertising and your sales.  Today, it’s not that easy. 

The most effective strategy is to empower your clients, patients, referral sources and friends to tell others about your services.  This will by definition give your marketing dollars maximum effect.

Some examples from other industries include:

Krispy-Kreme Donuts: Does not even advertise, but they have people lined up to buy donuts when the “fresh hot” light is on.  When they open a new location, it is a media event, and they use public relations and word of mouth to build the excitement.  The legend has usually preceded their opening.  What do the first customers do?  They buy enough donuts to proudly share with the office, friends, neighbors and family.  These new converts then do the same with their circle of friends and family. Word of Mouth marketing, in it’s extreme form.

Great Harvest Bread Company: Has been known for many years to provide great bread, but they now have an aggressive marketer at the helm.  Over the last year they have talked to their customers and implemented many customer-driven new features.  They have harvested email addresses for all of their best customers.  To celebrate the first year anniversary for the new owners, they sent out an email inviting their best customers to come in for a free loaf of bread.  When I went in to pick up my loaf, I found that it was in a big gift bag with a big red bow on it.  Attached to the bow were ten coupons to give my friends each a free loaf of bread. Who wouldn’t pass those on or talk about such a great and unique offer? 

Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow is a great book on being remarkable and getting people to spread the word about your product or service.  Seth used the same principles to promote the book.  He wrote an article in Fast Company magazine in January that was an excerpt from this book and in the article he offered to send any reader that emailed him a free copy of the book (he charged $5 for shipping and handling).  Over five thousand people responded and he distributed the books in March and shipped them out in purple and white milk cartons.  Then he offered to sell these same people additional books for $5 each but they had to buy twelve.  So each person that ordered additional books gave the books to their friends and business associates.  By the time the book was published and released to book stores in May it was a business best seller.  All of which was accomplished with no paid advertising.

The purpose of including these examples is to get you thinking about ways to harness word of mouth at your agency.  Since word of mouth is not prevalent in home care or hospice, the best examples are found outside the industry.  You should be looking for ideas on a daily basis.

We all have witnessed examples of word of mouth marketing successes, but what have we done to empower our customers to tell the world about our agency?  In the internet driven world, these programs are know as viral marketing.  An example of viral marketing would be Gmail.  This free email service grew like wildfire, and the marketing was unique (you had to get an invitation when they first started, and then gave each new user 5 invites to share).  This term is used because effective campaigns spread like a virus, and is true of all campaigns that are designed to enable customers to spread the word. 

To enable your message to spread like a virus, you must have customers that are true believers in your agency and its services.  This is accomplished through the provision of quality services, and by having an agency culture that is focused on delivering Legendary Customer Service.  Then you must provide the mechanism for your customers to spread the word.  Any type of tangible “thing” that allows them to easily tell others should be considered.  Simple items like refrigerator magnets can keep your name in front of the patient or client and make it easy to remember your agency’s name.  Patient identification cards or blood pressure cards enable your patients to best be able to tell their physician or a hospital discharge planner who they choose to use for home care services.

For private duty agencies one really powerful method of employing word of mouth advertising is to offer coupons for free services.  These coupons may be for a free day of services, a predetermined number of hours, or a specific package of services.  The coupon can be given to your best clients to give to their friends and neighbors.  Holiday gift coupons are another way to get your best clients to spread the word.  Another idea would be to send a bouquet of flowers every time a client sends you a friend as a referral. 

Use testimonials (especially in hospice) as they are very powerful in spreading the word.  You must train all of your staff to be on the alert for compliments and ask at that moment if the customer would be willing to put something in writing for you.  The staff in the home can help to facilitate this process by having something they carry with them at all times that the patient can use to write their feedback.  Why do you think that hotels, restaurants and other service companies have pre-printed postage paid return cards for their customers to provide their evaluations?  Anything you can do to make it easy for people to sing your praises should be considered and implemented.

Within word of mouth marketing programs, permission marketing is the most effective manner of conducting targeted marketing.  With the prospect’s permission to communicate with them about your services, you will have the greatest impact and success.  Whether you are communicating via mail, telephone, email or even in person, you will find that you will multiply your results per dollar invested by a factor of 10:1 or more when you have permission to do so.  Spam is the term given to unanticipated and impersonal messages that are sent to a list of people.

Anticipated, personal, and remarkable are the attributes we are seeking in creating the most effective marketing campaigns.  If your messages are anticipated and personal, you will have an almost 100% read rate and the highest effectiveness.  When you make them remarkable, then you have a very powerful marketing message.

By harnessing word of mouth marketing you will be able to maximize your investment, which is very important as all agencies have limited budgets for promoting their services. 

Home care and hospice are ideal services to use word of mouth marketing.  Your challenge is to create your message and empower your customers to spread it.  We have the advantage of reaching out and touching people’s lives on a daily basis.  The service that we provide is one that makes a real difference in the recipient and their family’s lives, but the missing ingredient has been packaging and a method to empower your customers to spread the word.

Is Your Agency Remarkable?

Being Remarkable Could Be the Answer to Your Recruiting and Marketing Challenges
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Is your agency remarkable?  Probably . . . but I’ll bet you don’t get credit for it.

Remarkable agencies will lead the way in the next decade. They will be the most successful marketers and the most successful recruiters. 

You and your staff do remarkable things every day, but don’t get the credit. It’s time to find ways to get credit for what you’re doing great, and work on everything else to make sure it’s remarkable too. 

There are two types of agencies: remarkable and unremarkable. Which do you want to be? If you want to fly under the radar, bringing in just enough to get by, then you might as well go ahead and stop reading right here. If, on the other hand, you would like to be a remarkable agency that is the logical choice for referral sources and for employment, then put these principles to work immediately.

There is a tremendous business book by Seth Godin entitled Purple Cow—Transform your Business by Being Remarkable that I would highly recommend.  The title comes from his family’s trip through France where his children were initially fascinated with the beautiful cows in the rolling countryside. After a while however, the cows were no longer of interest because they all looked alike. But what would have happened if they had come upon a Purple Cow? They would have probably stopped the car, gotten out, taken photos of the cow, and rubbed it to see if it was really purple.

The point of this story is that unremarkable businesses blend in with one another. Home care and Hospice agencies tend to blend together, quality is often an assumed factor, and this impacts the effectiveness of your marketing and recruiting programs. If every agency is assumed to be essentially the same, it becomes imperative that you show yourselves to be remarkable—no matter what type of agency you operate.

For private duty home care agencies this is vital to helping prevent your agency from having to compete on a price basis. To do so is to admit that what you are selling is just a commodity—and if that is your business model, then here’s wishing that you execute it well. And the sad thing is, most private duty agencies do exactly that. But if you can establish yourself as being remarkable—as the only logical solution when seeking private duty services—then you will be able to charge more for your services and be able to pick and choose the cases you want to take.

For Medicare agencies, being “the Purple Cow” will translate to being the agency of choice in your community for your doctors and discharge planners. It will also make your agency the one that all of the home care nurses aspire to work for. Your own nurses will be your best recruiters and your patients will be your best salespeople. Neither will be able to imagine using or working for any other agency.

For Hospice agencies, it will mean more patients in the community will get the gift of your wonderful care, and their families will get the support they need. If you are truly remarkable, those families will be singing your praises in the community, and you’ll have touched and affected a number of lives. 

So, now that I hopefully have your attention, how does one accomplish being a remarkable agency? 

First, let’s consider what remarkable means. It means worthy of remark, noteworthy or “worth recommending.” Isn’t that always better than the alternative of being unremarkable, or just plain boring? In the uncertain future of our industries, it’s becoming abundantly clear that it will be less risky to be risky, and it won’t be safe to play it safe.

Second, let’s agree that home care and hospice agencies do not have huge budgets for advertising, marketing and recruiting. Further, even if you had the unlimited budget, the traditional mass media doesn’t work anymore (if it ever did). 

Are you spending more on classified ads with less qualified people responding? That’s because all of the nurses worth hiring are already employed. 

Very few referral sources wake up in the morning and think, “I better look in the paper and see if I can find a good home care agency.” From the word around the community, from their patients, from other doctors and nurses, the remarkable agencies are already in their mind and on their speed dials.

Remember, quality is assumed—so that can never be your differentiating factor. Each agency needs to look for that one unique thing that will get the buzz going and establish them as the most interesting agency in town. We have to look for that “Purple Cow” that will appeal to the “sneezers” (those who love to talk about the best of anything) and make sure that they are in the right “hive”.  Sneezers are the people who will spread the word about anything that they find interesting and noteworthy (remarkable), and it’s through word of mouth that your agency will get more buzz, traction, and ultimately referrals.

One Home Care agency I’ve encountered created Nascar-esque “NurseCars” for their nurses to drive around in. It gave them mobile advertising around the community, for sure, but it also projected an image of being able to quickly go take care of any and all patient’s needs (hence the race car motif). There were stories on the local news, feature articles in the newspaper, and buzz around the community for a long time after.  This was one very smart way to set themselves apart—it was both unique AND practical. 

After you have defined your Purple Cow, then help the viral message started. This is all about getting three people who will tell three people who will tell three people . . . And, we have to make it easy for them to tell these people. You have to be willing to be out on the edge and consider some unusual (remarkable) ideas and concepts, and then carry them out with gusto.

What do you want to be known for?

Grassroots Branding: Hiring and Retaining Good Employees
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In home care and hospice, branding starts at the grass-roots level.  Historically, high level branding initiatives have proven relatively unsuccessful in our industry, and have not delivered a positive return on investment.  Why?

That is because in home care and hospice, branding is accomplished at the individual and local level.  The “brand” is only established at the personal level, and relationships—between agency employees, between customers, between your agency and your community—are all key to your agency’s sales and marketing success. Why is this?

In a service industry, your people are your product. Every person a customer or referral source interacts with, from your intake to your nurses to your reps—all of them are your sales people. Every single one is responsible for the ever important customer service. Every bad interaction your agency has with a member of the community has the potential to ruin your image, just as every amazing experience your agency has with a patient can build your reputation within the community. 

There are many examples of enormously successful businesses that are based on the importance of the relationship with the customer, and this is most true in home care.

Marketing or Recruiting?

It has been demonstrated that in home care and hospice, those agencies with good marketing programs will be better at recruiting and retaining employees.  Conversely, agencies that are better at recruitment and retention are generally better marketers.  The reasons for these are quite simple: recruiting is marketing for people.  Every time you create a positive impression in the community through marketing, it gets easier to recruit the best people. 

Hire for Attitude

Only hire the people with the best attitudes.  Anytime you violate this rule, you will lower your standards and you will run the risk of destroying much of the culture you have built. 

Pride is powerful and stems from knowing that your agency only has the highest of standards, starting with the staff qualifications.  Stability and quality of staff is an important element in the long-term viability of an agency’s sales and marketing program.

When looking at the most successful agencies, we observe that they have exceptional cultures built over the years by consistently hiring for attitude.  Outside of home care, America’s most admired companies all make attitude a top consideration when interviewing candidates.  Southwest Airlines is bombarded with applications each year with over 100 times the number of applications than they have job openings.  They continue to recruit aggressively and pick selectively.  They know that if the new hire has the right attitude that they can teach them everything else. 

Wegman’s Supermarkets finished first on the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work List in 2005 for just the reason: they have over a century of hiring great attitudes.  Whole Foods Markets has now become the largest retailer of natural foods in the country and has built their business on hiring people with the right attitudes.  The list goes on and on, but the point is that home care and hospice must also focus on the customer relationship.  The quality and training of the staff dictates the success of these initiatives.

Legendary Service Culture

Service sells.  There is no way to compete with strong relationships built on great customer service.  The culture of the agency should be one that provides exceptional service because that is the way it is done at that agency.  They can’t imagine doing it any other way.  By hiring the best and striving to create and maintain a Legendary Service Culture, the sales and marketing team will be very successful in bringing referrals to the agency.

Create the Ultimate Customer Experience

With the right people in place, it is possible to create the Ultimate Customer Experience: the goal being that every customer’s expectations are exceeded.  The agency that knows the needs of their customers consistently and automatically will build long-term and valuable relationships.  In home care and hospice there are so many divergent and unique customer needs that understanding exactly what each customer wants, needs, and expects, is critical.  Only with that knowledge can the agency create the Ultimate Customer Experience.  Once established, it provides a significant competitive advantage.

Pride

A proud organization will promote the agency and its services.  Since we know all of the staff are capable of generating significant numbers of referrals, pride becomes an important element in the overall sales and marketing strategy.  Pride is built over time by always doing the right things for the right reasons, consistently delivering quality services that exceed expectations, and by hiring the best at all levels.  Pride sells!

How staff are recognized and rewarded for their efforts to promote the agency will generate additional business growth.  Rewarding positive actions in a fun and public fashion creates a bandwagon effect.  Everyone wants to participate, and in doing so it creates tremendous inertia.

Celebrations

Celebrate your people.  There is tremendous marketing potential in how you celebrate Nurse’s Week and acknowledge their important contributions.  Home Care Month, Aide Week, Doctor’s Day, etc. provide natural opportunities for marketing.  Generate maximum opportunities from these activities.

If you are not approaching recruiting from the point of view of marketing, you will not reap the rewards of your efforts.  Every recruiting initiative should be designed to generate marketing exposure in your community.  The quality of the employees will dictate the level of service, the customer experience, and the long-term success of the agency. 

People are the key to home care relationships.  Successful sales and marketing of home care and hospice services is completely built on relationships.  The sales and marketing department should work closely with HR to unleash this important strategic and competitive advantage.



The Best Practices in Home Care and Hospice Marketing
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Home care and hospice managers are constantly looking for best practices to implement that will improve their success.  This is true for all types of agencies as the pressure to perform financially mounts, and I’ve found this to be most especially true with not-for-profit agencies. 

The number one best place to employ best practices to improve performance, outside of sales, is in the marketing area.  Increased marketing efficiency and effectiveness will add referrals and bring added profits to the bottom line. So, what are the best marketing practices?

Seven Simple Steps to Boost the Effectiveness of Brochures and Advertisements

Agencies spend a fortune each year on printed material.  The bad news is that most of the brochures I come across are nice looking, but not very effective. 

Agencies also spend a lot on print advertisements, including Yellow Pages ads.  Again, most of these advertisements are basic and don’t showcase the agency’s story, which we will be getting into.

Ultimately, the first step is to define your target audience and the goals for the campaign. Once you’ve done that, here are seven tips to improve the pull of your printed material:

Sell Benefits not Features

This single piece of advice can make an investment in a marketing campaign, brochure, advertising campaign, etc. a success rather than a failure.  Always keep the customer in mind—that is the only thing that matters when designing a new piece.

Know your target market and what they want from a home care or hospice agency.  Look at your message from the customer’s viewpoint.  Don’t make any assumptions—test your message.  Talk to your customers.  Your message must resonate with the intended market to be effective.

Customers want to know how your service will meet their need, make them feel safer or provide them with something of perceived value. To do this, list all of the benefits of working with your agency, and then determine those that are most important to the intended audience of your piece.

Use Photos and Graphics that Tell Your Agency’s Story

The old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is very true in designing effective printed pieces.  The photo must be one that makes the customer experience the proper emotion to be most effective.  Captions under photos should be considered to explain what is going on in the photo that is important to the customer.  Don’t assume that the customer looks at the photo and understands the importance.

Use graphics that are additive to the message and that make it easier to understand and utilize.  For example:  A service area map is always more effective than a list of counties or cities served.

All of your photos and all of your graphics must have one thing in mind: your agency’s story. What story do you want the community to be telling about your agency? Determine this, and plan everything to point at that goal.

Use Effective Headlines

The headline must tell the reader exactly why they should consider your agency.  Crafting the right headline should be something that you get professional help with.  The right headline can make your brochure or advertisement ten times more effective.  This is especially true for print ads and Yellow Pages ads.  The headline is the single most important item in these ad designs, as it may be the only thing your customer looks at.

Use sub-headings to explain each section or each paragraph.  This will make your copy more effective and easier for the customer to find what they are looking for.  You cannot expect the customer to read every word in a brochure—they will skim the headlines and read the information that answers their question.

Keep it Clean

Do not try to cram too much into the space allowed.  White space is good to have in advertisements and in brochures.  Keep the message clear and on point with the goals for the item. This is modern design 101—keep it clean and easy with white space.

Use Testimonials

A testimonial will tell the story and create credibility faster than anything you can say or do.  People will always believe what others say about you more than what you say about yourself.

The most effective testimonials have the person’s name and photograph.  Remember:  Make sure you have written permission to use the testimonial, name, and photo in the promotion of your agency.

Use Simple Words and Simple Style

Use short simple words to express your meaning.  Educated readers understand simple words while uneducated people do not understand long high-brow words.  Even if you have to substitute three or four words for one difficult word one, you will be much better off.  Write at an educational level just under the lowest one in your target market.

Include a Call to Action

Include a call to action in your advertisements.  Offer a free booklet or report—something of perceived value to the intended audience.  Then provide an easy way to request it.  Include a direct response mail card, a toll-free number—whatever will make it easiest and least threatening for your prospect to request.  Include an e-mail address for your prospects to respond electronically.

Whenever you are creating a new print piece, follow these seven simple steps and you will see the performance of your brochure or print ad skyrocket!



Putting the Customer First
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Putting your customer first pays big dividends in home care and hospice sales.  This includes both your agency putting the needs and wants of the patients first, as well as those of the referral sources.  If you ask 100 referral sources what is most important to them when selecting a home care or hospice, 95% of them will respond “that they take good care of my patients.” But when you ask what that means to them? This is when it can start to get interesting, as the actionable insights they share with you can be used to build strong relationships.

Train your sales team to ask how they can make a referral source’s life easier.  If you can make it demonstrably easier to refer to your agency, you will get the referrals.  Find out from the referral source how they would like to be treated, and then create a customized “plan of care” for each of them.  We create individual care plans for our patients; why not for the referral sources?

Communicating Quality

It’s increasingly difficult to communicate quality, but the best way is to personify it—make it tangible.  How you communicate quality is a determent of successful home care and hospice sales and marketing.  The key lies not in just talking about quality, but rather in demonstrating it to each referral source in a way that is meaningful to them.  Every agency claims to provide quality services, but in fact, quality in most home care or hospice referrals is presumed. 

Use tangible examples that demonstrate how quality shows up at your agency.  Here are just a few ways to do this:

~ Use benchmarked data in graphical format to show how your outcomes compare to others.

~ Utilize telemedicine and explain that your agency feels that this represents the new standard of care for many diagnoses.  That the agency has made this investment because it is consistent with providing the best possible care.

~ Patient and family testimonials that speak to the wonderful care that they received from your company.

~ Endorsements from local, well respected physicians.

~ Introduce clinical field staff to the physicians and offices of the patients they serve.

Be passionate about home care and hospice, find out how to help your referral sources make their lives easier, and keep smiling! 


What’s Good for the Patient is Good for the Agency
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The best way to create a solid business foundation is to foster a customer centric, sales focused organization.  If your agency approaches every decision with the question “what’s best for the patient?” everything else will fall into place. 

Acting in this manner does not run contrary to operating a good business—it simply keeps things in proper perspective.  It is entirely consistent with your mission, but it also empowers all members of your agency to focus on selling its services. Thus, referrals will increase alongside the pride felt for your company.

Customer-centricity marries sales with the all important Customer Service.  Training your intake department about customer service, and how to recognize and respond to opportunities in a customer needs based manner builds both trust and buzz within your community.  Once customers are recognized as the organization’s most important asset, the sales approach and management of customers takes on a new, long-term orientation in your employees’ minds.

Customer centric sales techniques are built around needs assessment.  The sales people (both outside and inside) ask purposeful, relevant questions.  They have meaningful conversations with customers and offer solutions that are directly related to their needs.  This empowers referral sources, regardless of preferred providers, to make the only logical choice: your agency.

Selling home care and hospice services requires the perfect balance of sales skills, people skills, product knowledge, enthusiasm, and ethics.  Long-term success will elude those who are not passionate about home health and hospice.  There are easier places to make a living than selling these services, but no more rewarding sales career. Keep this in mind when hiring new prospective sales reps, and you will lower your turnover rates.

Lastly, passion and enthusiasm are contagious and as a result, produce higher sales results from your team!  Having a positive self image and visualizing success are essential to maintaining an enthusiastic attitude.  The sales team must feel they are empowered, appreciated, respected and heard.  This is true in all realms of sales, but is especially true when selling an intangible such as the services we provide to our communities.

Be passionate about home care and hospice, love what you do, act with integrity, and keep smiling.